22 Jul Faith, Grace and a Big Fish

After getting home late on a Sunday night after a fishing adventure with no fish, my Uncle said to me, “You need to increase your faith & grace for fishing.” My last few trips had the same result – lots of effort getting ready but no serious fish brought home.

At first I thought, “It’s just fishing. You have good days and some not so good days – everybody does, right?”. But I started to think more about what he said because I’ve been taught that truth is often spoken very casually by people over us in the Lord and it can be easily missed.

Grace is power from God to do something. It’s amazing that He gives it, and it can be obtained for anything. And faith isn’t feelings, but aligning and/or agreeing with God despite the external signs we see.

Faith is bold. It holds on when you can’t see any evidence. What you see and feel doesn’t matter because your eyes are on Him to come through.

In Hebrews the writer puts it like this:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Heb 11:1 (ESV).

Some other definitions are: free from doubt, confident of something expected, or sure of one’s data.

Why would I need to increase my faith and grace? I kept thinking about what my Uncle had said to me and I was asking God too. It seemed too significant to ignore because it was before my mind so much.

It dawned on me, that my problem seemed to be that if I caught fish I was happy but also if I didn’t catch fish I was equally happy. I wasn’t fazed either way. Which translated to me as indifference.

This was my problem. Indifference which can be apathy, mediocrity or lack of concern or in this case, unbelief.

It was actually in most of my life, and I could see it now because of the fishing example. God uses everyday people and experiences to teach us about Him and about things in our life that need to change! But now to get rid of indifference.

I had another fishing trip coming up so I set my heart to believe God for a good fish – a Barramundi. I started to change my thinking and chose to actually want to catch it, and believed God for one (God actually cares about this stuff).

When the time came, I casted out. I went with my gut feeling to go with hard body lures instead of live bait and lured away when ‘bang’, I had a hit. It wasn’t really big, but I had something. When I got it in, I discovered it was a Cod.

Now this was more action than I had had in a long time, so I was pleased but when I released it, I thought “No, God, I believe you for a Barramundi. Thanks for the Cod, but I’m still believing for what I asked for.”

A few more casts then ‘bang’, again now, this was a big hit, it fought hard but the line snapped and I lost the fish. I re-rigged my line, I was thankful but I went back to believing as the word said “faith is being sure of what you hope for”.

A few more casts and ‘bang!’ another hit, and man what a fight. It fought hard for a few minutes before we pulled it into the boat and there it was, the Barramundi I had believed for.

In the end it’s just a big fish, but it taught me a big lesson: indifference kills faith, and it’s a big barrier in walking with God.

Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash